Wine & film

Every summer from mid-July to early August there is an outdoor cinema festival at the Parc de la Villette in the northeast corner of Paris. As night falls at 10.30pm or so in these long days of the year, the film starts late, leaving a broad expanse of time to go tipple elsewhere or—which is more gratifying—directly in the park.

Aside from a couple of shameful tourist spaces—I’ll name names: the Champs-Elysées and the Champ de Mars (that flat mown park in front of the Eiffel Tower)—where boozing has been proscribed, everywhere else in this fine town, one may bring one’s bottle(s) and corkscrew, stemware, whatever else seems apposite, and tuck in.

Picnics abound.

And, oh my brothers, a few days ago they showed (in the original with subtitles) „A Clockwork Orange.”

It had been warm that day, nearly 80°F after a week of chill, overcast and mediocre dashed-hopes summertime. No, this day was hot and sunny. It was still fine out as night fell, but it was also nice to have a woolen blanket (rentable from the park) and to sit on a canvas lawn chair and watch that still startling, still hilarious film under dark and beautiful yet calm skies, with a wind that kicked up.

My friend Meg brought the last of her stash of 2007 François Chidaine Montlouis, bought in a frenzy of appreciative relief in, I dunno, March or so, at a wine festival.

We’d had a curious bottle of bubbly back at the ranch (viz., her flat nearby) before striking out to the park, whetting our filmgoing vinous appetites with NV Domaine de L’Ocre Rouge „La Perle,” a méthode champenoise from the south of France, about 11 miles north of Nîmes. Half pinot noir, half chardonnay, it rides the back of a very Champenois blend. And it has an ace up its sleeve: the vigneron is in fact a son of those chalky hills—Ayméric Beaufort, of the family renowned for the exuberantly good Champagne Jacques Beaufort. But given the dramatically different climate, the wine was a curious creature; dry with a bit of citrus pith, but also a pearish tone. An interesting discovery, and a fair friend for the small round yellow zucchinis my host had prepared, stuffed with ground pork and spelt, robed with a few leaves of basil. We should all eat basil when we go up to heaven.

Then: the park. The film. That dark yet clement sky. The savory Montlouis (damn, Chidaine is a monster of pitch-perfect winemaking). The lovely silence amid many. All were quiet. I hate to say it, but films are better when lots of people are watching them. I always go alone, but here we were all alone, and all enrapt.

But we were drinking best.

* Sharon Bowman, bloggerka, znawczyni wina.

„Kultura Liberalna” nr 83 (33/2010) z 10 sierpnia 2010 r.

Proust for winos (or vice versa)

I had a madeleine the other day.

Not the tea cake, but y’know, one of those things that jogs you, like a cobblestone sticking up that catches your foot and makes you stumble into the past. A wine remembered from earlier times, one that conjured up those times. So I thought it would be interesting, amusing and perhaps even illuminating to submit this blog (and myself) to the vinous version of the (in)famous Proust Questionnaire.

Forthwith, rendered into terms propitious for wine:

1. Your most marked characteristic?

In wine, I like being (as they say in French) a horse that eats from all the troughs. There are styles of wine I like less (moelleux springs immediately to mind), but I like to test periodically my so-called wine prejudices. Sometimes there have been fabulous turnarounds. I’ve been seen proselytizing for chenin, of late!

2. The quality you most like in a man red wine?

I like ethereal red wines. I also like a certain rusticity. What I don’t like is overbearing viscousness or jammy fruit. My gamut might span from Pineau d’Aunis to Cornas by way of Pinot Noir and cru Beaujolais. (And indeed, I am mixing up grapes and appellations. At least I don’t say „varietal.”)

3. The quality you most like in a woman white wine?

I like slightly oxidative whites. Like a woman showing her flesh. Or a barrel giving a sigh.

4. What do you most value in your friends?

I’m friends with those wines that take themselves seriously. Not in their outer trappings (unless we’re talking high-quality corks)—heavy bottles, designer labels or consequential pricing. But wines that are not funny. They don’t referment or reek, just as they don’t float, aromatically, with the remnant particles of toasted wood chips. They are honest but honed.

5. What is your principle defect?

I break stemware.

6. What is your favorite occupation?

Two, where wine is concerned. One is obviously sitting at a table with good food and opening bottles with friends, enjoying them over the course of the evening. The other is visiting a vigneron, seeing where and how the wine is made, by whom, and tasting it there.

7. What is your dream of happiness?

A really fine Burgundy with the right amount of age. Or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, something I have never heard of before that turns out to be astounding. I could make my short dream list. I have friends with quirky taste.

Hm, I feel so serious! So sententious! This is the first third. Maybe the others I’ll do more Dada in style. Stay tuned.

* Sharon Bowman, bloggerka, znawczyni wina.

„Kultura Liberalna” nr 77 (27/2010) z 29 czerwca 2010 r.

Still bubbling up

Unable to contain myself, I have returned to my frequent thematic stomping ground of farmer fizz.

Just up, a guest post scribed by me for my friend Scott Reiner’s blog, The Wine Explorer.

In the meantime, I shall sedately relax from the pleasant aftereffects of a few bottles of Lassaigne (07 Papilles Insolites, 06 Le Cotet) and Selosse (Rosé) shared last night with a pair of similarly champagne-hoovering friends.

* Sharon Bowman, bloggerka, znawczyni wina.

„Kultura Liberalna” nr 60 (10/2010) z 9 marca 2010 r.

Wine? Or crack?

This blog post is a public service announcement for those interested in wine. The picture of the seemingly harmless bottle above is one you should stamp into your retinas and retain. Blink twice. You see this bottle, here, now, safely virtual. If you see this bottle in the real world, flee. Or else give in. I’ll have warned you.

Sometimes wine crosses you over to the dark realms of craving, though it’s not often. Well, the bright and sunny bottle you are being shown here in fact hides a terribly addictive philter within its glass confines.

2008 Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon Nº2, with its headily aromatic nose and will-breakingly deep palate, redolent of all those things you want in a sauvignon (lemon zest, rocks, white flowers, and then a fleshy hint of calisson or apricot), bests a whole host of Sancerres and other supposedly higher-end regional fodder. Sip it alone, sip it with shellfish, sip it at the beach or at the Buttes-Chaumont or on a deck festooned with striped deck umbrellas or in a city apartment.

Then be prepared for the consequences. You will want more.

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

Naturally unnatural: orange wines

I was sitting at my desk on a dark, cloudless spring night with a lamp shining indirect, yellowish light. I had a bottle on the glass desktop, next to the MacBook. The bottle was cool to the touch. The label was minimalistic, hand-drawn, and from the side peeked out the recognizable font of the LOUIS/DRESSNER importer label.

Opened and poured into a large stem, the wine shone ocher through the glass. I swirled and smelled. 2006 Cà de Noci „Notte di luna” has heady perfumes of spice, cardamom, orange peel, gingerbread. I sipped and felt it expand in my mouth, sending floods of complex quince and tannin over my palate. This is god wine.

Before last fall I had never had an „orange” wine, and did not even know they existed. That a disparate and geographically diverse handful of natural winemakers would choose to produce pungent, tannic skin-contact white wines in an unmistakable style, relying on barefoot crushing, on wild yeasts, and, for some of them, on amphorae, hadn’t been part of my wine lexicon. Especially as there wasn’t anyone doing it in France.

So, my first dalliance with Notte di luna was memorable, and I blogged about it at the time. But I didn’t realize that what we had on our hands had been, for all of its remarkable uncommonness, of a style. Thus, I was still the novice several months later when, during a dinner, my friend SFJoe got out a skinny 500ml bottle with a blue label. I rolled my eyes, thinking he was once again slinging the sweet stuff, as he is wont to do. Wrong. And how.

2003 Radikon „Jakot” – A dry, bright wine with hidden depths. This hits your nose before you get anywhere near the glass. What I loved about the wine was its offhand, palate-flattering approach, which then spirals wildly into great length and complexity. It’s both easy and tricky. Its name is a joke, too, being the backwards of Tokaj, which is its grape, but which it is not allowed to be called any more. This is a natural wine that is impudent, jokey, the fool, and foolishly good. (It also fools you by making you think it’s light in alcohol; then you find yourself tipsy and realize that despite its balance, it carries 14% abv.)

The Radikon was both an epiphany and a spark in my mind: I wanted more of this. But „this” was both a particular and a category. If other wines out there could bring the heady category confusion of Cà de Noci and Radikon, I wanted to taste them, to test them.

One day, when it was raining really, really hard, it was time to open a Gravner, after having kicked off shoes so wet they could have been wrung out.

2002 Gravner Ribolla Gialla „Anfora” – A more austere wine, in comparison to the Radikon. Deep amber in color and with heft on the palate, it stretched out in dark slices of pain d’épice, but was as tight as a fist. Closed and stern, it was fascinating like someone who won’t tell you what he’s thinking. This needs far more time – years – but promises to be a gorgeous butterfly when it gets out of its cocoon. It’ll have stories to tell. It’ll spill the goods.

I had now sussed out what this orange wine phenomenon was all about, and was all knowing with another bottle – this I enjoyed less, and didn’t retain the producer’s name – quaffed at the restaurant Convivio over a plateful of crab and sea urchin malloreddus. Yet to my mind, I thought it was an Italian thing.

Flash forward.

Last night, Josh Raynolds came at me with a bottle bearing the brown-toned label of the California winery Wind Gap. I waved him away. „I’ve had their wine before!” I demurred, recalling a very even-handed (12.5% alcohol!) unoaked chardonnay about which I’d thought: Sure, but they can do this in France in their sleep.

Josh said, „But this is an orange wine.”

I turned around (yes, I’d already turned my back on him and was retreating toward the last sip of a glass of Donati Malvaisa frizzante). He smiled wickedly and poured a healthy pour into my now emptied glass.

2008 Wind Gap Pinot Gris – Here we go; clove and quince and thick delightfulness. „Look at that color,” he observed. Slightly cloudy, it was deep. And as it opened and unfurled in the glass, I found those tastes again.

Those unnaturally natural orange wine tastes.

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

Spring things

Spring is for lightness with a bit of residual sugar, I’ve decided. Light whites, Loire whites, chenins, romorantins, weird Monts-Damnés Sancerres from hills so aslope, their aromatics explode and they persist on the palate with a heady blend of alcohol and sweetness.

These things we can deal with, now that the sun is out and flowers bloom in buckets in front of florists’ stores. You want to mash basil with a mortar and pestle. Sauté some seasonal greens. Eat fish that only come around once a year, and maybe their roe, too. And pour things like the following, for a start.

1991 Pichler Ried Dürnsteiner Kellerberg Riesling Smaragd – an Austrian riesling with age and smoothly matured aromatics. A lovely thing, long and sinuous on the palate. Great while scarfing down focaccia.

2006 Bornard Arbois Melon „Le Rouge-Queue” – Oxidative delight! A Jurassian chardonnay that delivers ample funk, like a mountain stream in an opium dream. Let it tangle with your tongue. Who knows who the winner will be?

2000 Brégéon Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine Gorgeois – Long, involved, complex, noble of brow, yellow. Deep and ponderous and lovely. And something to slurp oysters down with – if ever one should admit to eating oysters at this point in the season.

NV Mayragues Vin de Table de France Brut de Mayragues – a méthode ancestrale bubbly made from 100% Mauzac. With its lazy bubble, slow and happy on the palate, like a turtle sitting contentedly in the sun. Somewhat lavish, despite zero dosage; round, fruitful, good, made to quaff.

2007 A. & P. De Villaine Bouzeron – City mouse and country mouse, at once. Expressive, floral, and stony; another mountain stream – this time, sans opiates. Sharp, sleek, too: a flash of light off the hood of a very shiny car, which you walk into, because you’re momentarily blinded.

2007 Ostertag Sylvaner Vieilles Vignes – once, this wine had an off-putting dill note to it; now it has a bit of honeyed oxidation. Ah, that’s certainly more like it. A heavy-hitter of a sylvaner, but still, true to its sylvanerism, affable and easygoing. A patch of sunlight in the grass back onto which to lean after you’ve had a couple of glasses and are feeling blithe.

2008 Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon Nº2 – perfect. A platonic spring wine. A platonic wine. A wine that is soon no more, because you drink it all. And I mean all.

Others, of course, could be added to this roster. More keep sprouting like new buds and stalks. And I haven’t even gotten to the Tale of the Bubbles.

Anon.

It’s time to step out for some air and light.

http://sharonwine.blogspot.com/

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

Wine for rain, wine for sun

I had never thought about it before, but there is something about the delicious minerality of a Puligny-Montrachet that goes well with the rain.

The other night I ran out with not one but two umbrellas (well, I was using one, and one had been loaned to me on some other rainy day, and I was returning it to its rightful owner, who would be on hand). Finally, despite wearing new shoes that kept wanting to remove themselves from my feet and go flying into a puddle, I managed to turn up at the set destination: a wine restaurant.

Once wet things had been cast off to some coat area, it was time to have a seat and ponder the wine list.

As the rain splashed lightly against the front window, a few minutes later, the sommelier opened a bottle of

1985 Carillon Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru „Combettes” - Well, as Tina Turner did not sing, I can stand the rain. In fact, the sound of cold patter on concrete was a great backdrop for this deceptively simple and increasingly enthralling wine. There’s a term the French use that I like a lot: évidence. It indicates something’s „of-course-ness.” There was about this wine an ease of being, a raciness, a stony, high-handed purity, an évidence. It was youthful (not a drop of oxidation to its brisk yellow body) and a little shy until maybe a half-hour in. Then it bloomed. Blossoms under the rain.

A few days later, the sun was out. It was warm. A bunch of us decided to gather in the park, and I threw a slightly chilled bottle of López de Heredia into my bag, reasoning that the ambient temperature would warm it.

2002 López de Heredia Rioja „Viña Cubillo” – all part of my enthrallment with Riojas from this producer. Interestingly enough, I had had a bottle of this same, younger-drinking cuvée a week earlier at a wine bar: there, it was more austere, harder around the edges, tighter and more tannic. Here, under the sun, with a dog slobbering around (Peanut would eventually eat the Rioja cork) and people nibbling cut sausage, it was lighter in color (maybe the wine bar had been too dark), lighter-bodied, fresh and earthy. God, I said to myself as I cosseted it, it was such a pleasure of a wine to sip on a breezy, warm day. A wine for sun, clearly, with all its broodiness cleared away, replaced by a daringly rustic backwardness to it that had immense charm.

http://sharonwine.blogspot.com/

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

Overcoming grape fears

Since last I wrote, I have continued valiantly affronting my prejudices. Now, of course, we all have grapes we don’t like. I know some highly recommendable people who have, shall we say, issues with Cabernet Franc or Grenache. (Actually, the most common bête noire among wine-drinking friends seems to be the oft-maligned yet intensely wonderful (well, to me) Chardonnay grape. I will have to get proselytizing). That said, I must reluctantly remind one and all that I myself am known for not consuming hogsheads of Chenin Blanc or Gewürztraminer, say.

But as ever, I like to be on the frontlines – or down in the trenches, pick your military image – of my own preconceptions, flighting that fight. Because, really, it’s a voyage of learning, now, isn’t it? Well, along with getting tipsy, carousing, and having shared mini-epiphanies with friends.

This week, two towers crumbled right down to the dust. How’s that for Ozymandias?

2002 Huet Le Haut-Lieu Demi-Sec – this wine knocked me off my feet, and I sat down next to Brad Kane and nodded with that half-smile that indicates great pleasure and surprise. My notes from the evening I tasted it have long since disappeared into some dumpster behind a tony midtown restaurant; suffice it to say that this wine opened my eyes in a particularly crystalline way. I wanted to cup it to me, but of course that would have warmed it up, so I just stared deep into it, then gradually drank it away.

2006 Jérôme Prévost „La Closerie” – Eeeew, pinot meunier. That was the thinking. But this was immediately more imposing than other expressions I have had of that grape. A rich, vinous nose met me as I leaned into the glass. Dark amberish color, with just a touch of walnutty oxidative overtones. I was enchanted by its smell. On the palate, however, at first, this was tight, hard in its lines; very low in dosage, it was clear. The apple, quince notes were pleasant, but they were somewhat pushed aside by a hard mineral finish. This needed more age, and first, more air. So I let it open up, expand in the glass. It did come into its own with some breathing, broadening, becoming more smooth. Being a few degrees warmer also did it a nice turn. It does need age, but it is already an impressive drink.

http://sharonwine.blog.com/

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

What a difference a day makes

A few days ago, I opened up this one, a 1996 Ridge Geyserville.

Now, as far as American wines go, I have a soft spot for Ridge. A glorious 1987 Ridge Monte Bello remains one of my most rapturous wine-tasting experiences. And not so long back, a 1999 Geyserville had impressed and astonished a group of friends who had never tasted the Zinfandel grape in their Gallic lives.

I was looking forward to trying one with a little more age, even, than that – which, while still young, had taken on a good openness, a suppleness, of nearly ten years.

But the 1996 was an animal of a different stripe.

Poured into the glass, it was inky dark. On the nose, very appealing. Ripe, spicy, with plums and dark fruit. I sipped it. Hrm. It seemed to lack elegance. It was tight, tannic, hard-nosed, with an off-putting raisiny note. Aggressive stuff, brawny and unbalanced.

I listlessly finished a glass, hoping with a little air it would improve. No dice.

As it was late, now, I left the bottle on the counter and went to sleep.

In the morning, walking into the kitchen, I saw that it had remained stranded, open, there, and mechanically put a cork in it.

At the end of the day, coming back with a bag full of food to prepare and a hankering for something white, I nevertheless looked at the 1996 Geyserville, which was still standing (with, as you’ll note, streaks of disdained juice down its label like tears) on the counter. I uncorked it and poured a quarter of a glass.

Hey! This was more like it. Swirl, sniff: still that pretty nose. But now, on the palate, it had gotten very elegant. There was still a lurking little bit of overripe fruit to it, but otherwise, the pepper and dark cherry and meaty notes had coalesced into a very pleasant wine.

That, I would never have imagined. A small pleasure.

http://sharonwine.blog.com/

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

Fresh fruit

Spring is here. It’s over sixty degrees out! (Fahrenheit, for those of you in the Anglo-Saxon world.) And what better way to bask in the newfound warmth than to open some fresh whites – and fresh reds.

I’d chilled the 2007 Lapierre Morgon. It came out of the fridge. So it was no wonder that at first, it was muted and basically said „Brr!” to the palate. But the table is warm. Conviviality is warm. And with half an hour in the glass, with the ambient temperature pushing it past the threshold of coldness into gentle coolness, this wine flowered.

A lovely, fruity, fresh Morgon that suddenly buzzed and sparked with all kinds of tinder. God, this was gorgeous. God, I took another sip and sipped in air and sloshed it around my mouth and loved it. I treated that wine with attention, as its finely unfurling gamay fruit merited.

Perhaps I had been too zealous in its chilling, one could argue. But then, it’s always a fine trick to see the dove fly out of the hat.

This was definitely a dove-out-of-the-hat experience.

http://sharonwine.blogspot.com/

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

Wine with others, wine alone

Everyone has a different idea of which things in one’s life one does alone and which must be done with others. Sometimes it seems to me that the variations and possibilities are as broad and manifold as the different types of likes and aversions in enjoying food. So, as it happens, just as I like every foodstuff on the planet except dill and bananas (as a fairly newfound convert to previously disliked Comté cheese and vin jaune; merci Philippe!), I am someone who prefers to go to the movies alone. I am someone who would rather enter a restaurant after someone else. I don’t like to talk on the phone.

But what about drinking wine? Is the experience perceptually different when the wine is shared as opposed to when it’s drunk in contemplative solitude?

So much is made of the difference between drinking wine in situ – with a meal, with other wine lovers – and sipping and spitting at a tasting. Different wines prevail; enjoyment factors and levels are tweaked, skewed and become unrecognizable from one platform to the other.

But what of the human context? If I open, say, a 2000 Rousseau Chambertin* for my own self in the privacy of my own living room with nice stemware and some food I’ve prepared with care, am I missing out on something?

My thought, my gut reaction, is: yes. Being able to share impressions and enthusiasms with someone or a group of friends is very important to the experience of wine drinking. Something is lost when there is no echo, no quick glance, no shared smile, no nod.

So my new stance will be, if ever I should find myself eating alone and wanting a glass to pair with the meal, to choose something novel; to make it a learning experience. But not to try for enthrallment, for emotion.

It’s good to scale back, sometimes.

Now, to head out to a big wine-geek dinner. Thank god there are others of us out there!

*The cool thing about hypotheticals is that you can go as high-end as you want. And the 2000 Rousseau Chambertin is a damn lovely wine.

http://sharonwine.blogspot.com/

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.

Southern fraîcheur

I have to say that I hadn’t thought a lot about Picpoul de Pinet in my time. I’d had it a few times and found it a sprightly, uncomplicated southern French white (from the Languedoc, for those geographically uncalibrated to the appellation).

Then a couple of weeks ago, at the end of a rather protracted evening, I found myself in a wine bar with some friends, and here, we worked in a bottle of 2007 Félines Jourdan Picpoul de Pinet. Hey! This was not what I had been expecting. (To be honest – and I hope throngs of Picpoul producers will not come at me with pitchforks – I had seen Picpoul as a kind of southern Gros Plant… thin, spritzy, thoughtless. But shh… no more of that, oh, no.) This was not that. This captured my attention.

My recollection being hazy, I decided it was time to revisit this interesting wine, so a few days ago, I opened another bottle of the 2007.

A very expressive aromatic palate met my nose on swirling. And, tasted, it had so much character. 13% alcohol, so no frail creature, it had a bright, transparent body to it and on the palate was fresh, floral, with an excellent lime-y, peppery bite to it. It was spring in a bottle, just the thing for a late February cold snap, reminding you of warmer climes and warmer times.

And with smoked salmon, a perfect match.

http://sharonwine.blogspot.com/

* Sharon Bowman,
pisarka, znawczyni wina.